1) I Killed the Zeitgeist; 2) Break My Heart Slowly; 3) Withdraw/Retreat; 4) Goodbye Suicide; 5) The Shining Path; 6) Bobby Untitled; 7) You Will Always Be My Home; 8) So Much for the Future; 9) Stab Yr Heart; 10) Kimono Rock; 11) Sehnsucht; 12) (Nicky Wire's) Last; 13) Everything Fades
A rough and raggedy ugly duckling with a heart of gold. So, a Nicky Wire record.
Key tracks: “I Killed the Zeitgeist”, “The Shining Path”, “Bobby Untitled”
Nicky Wire had been writing the lyrics for Manic Street Preachers for years but barely contributed to the music. James Dean Bradfield and Sean Moore were the musically gifted wonders, meanwhile Wire had spent years talking down his own musical skills even long after it stopped being relevant. Still, a spark remained and the experimental, laissez-faire sessions around 2001’s Know Your Enemy gave Wire the informal go-ahead to have a go at writing music. A few years later and Wire was actively writing a song here and there (even if they were relegated to b-sides), and had started to hint at writing a solo album. When the band took a break in mid-2005, he was the first member to announce one.
To put this into context, no one was expecting anything out I Killed the Zeitgeist. In the band's early days Bradfield would record the bass parts for the albums and the band couldn't play certain songs live because Wire couldn't consistently play the riffs, and while he'd gotten much better over the years the reputation stayed. The first songs written by him for the Manics were chaotic, rudimentary and divisive, and even though by the mid-00s he had learned to write more melodically, there was still the issue of Wire's voice - i.e. the fact that his grovely, inherently out-of-tune voice just wasn't cut for singing. In short, the general expectation was that whatever Wire would release would be a complete mess.
I Killed the Zeitgeist is most definitely a bit of a mess, but so is Wire and it’s an album that very explicitly embraces it just like Wire would. It’s ramshackle and scattershot by purpose, almost antagonistically showing off its unpolished rough edges on the spot - including the complete lack of bass on the record, simply because Wire's whim dictated that it would be hilariously subversive on account of him being the bassist in his band. But Wire picked the perfect sonical playground for his irreverent attitude. Musically I Killed the Zeitgeist is a love letter to his punk roots and love for 80s lo-fi indie and the C86 scene, and its collection of primal punk anarchy, introverted ballads and cacophonic noise is all glued up on top of another like a collage of clippings. The liner notes and artwork for the album consist of typewriter printouts of the lyrics with scribbles in the margins, typographical errors and hasty after-edits in multi-colour pens, surrounded by scruffy polaroids, puppy stickers and glittery stamps, and it's the perfect visual insight to the world of I Killed the Zeitgeist perfectly. It's a chaotic tumbleweed of whimsy and guts, a peak to the leopard print world of a man who has always straddled between a tortured poet and a provocative brat.
And it is good. The range of I Killed the Zeitgeist proves that Wire is a good songwriter, who has evolved leaps and bounds since his first songs. Much of the album operates on his trademark glam punk aesthetic, but there's plenty of surprises too - some successful (the finale gear change in "Stab Yr Heart" that's almost Bradfield-esque), some less so ("So Much for the Future" devolves into noise in a way that isn't as interesting or artsy as it thinks, the instrumental "Sehnsucht" isn't interesting enough musically to stop being more than a pleasant filler song). But besides the few dips, I Killed the Zeitgeist is remarkably consistent. "Break My Heart Slowly" is an absolutely classic pop anthem dressed up in rags and eyeliner and coming from the most unexpected source, "The Shining Path" houses some of the album's strongest hooks and neatest arrangements (love that sharp acoustic guitar playing the lead melody, flipping the album's general acoustic/electric roles) and shows that Bradfield isn't the only one in the band gunning for big rock anthems, and "Stab Yr Heart" is a low-key highlight even before it switches to its remarkably good extended instrumental outro full of elegance and style. In some parts Wire channels his old Generation Terrorists self, full of cheeky attitude, sardonic sense of humour and a borderline arrogant conviction in his own message as he plows through the livelier numbers like the sing-along happy "Withdraw/Retreat" and the cock rock of "Kimono Rock" (the former which features Bradfield in a vocal cameo, the latter in guitars). The rugged punk of the title track which may not be very intricate, but it latches onto the listener so well in so many ways (the big hook of a chorus, the gratuitous German, the DO DO DO) and its placer as the opener is the perfect introduction to the album as the song reveals all its quirks and traits right off the bat. They're carefully balancing on the border between entertainingly raggy and genuinely good, and come through full of swagger, point blank effective hooks and a sense of rock 'n' roll fun.
The biggest surprise is the number of songs where Wire conjures up something more poignant, and produces some genuinely lovely songs that run almost in antithesis of the image he projects elsewhere on the record. "You Will Always Be My Home", "Bobby Untitled", "(Nicky Wire's) Last" and "Everything Fades" are atmospheric, tender and sometimes flat-out beautiful songs, with melodies strong enough to work in a Manics album. "You Will Always Be My Home" and "Bobby Untitled" in particular could be called almost sophisticated compared to the rest of the album, the former showcasing one of the album's best vocal melodies and the latter coming across as the most fully-realised composition and arrangement of the entire record, and "(Nicky Wire's) Last" goes a great way to show just how well Wire's introspective lyrics can work when he's the one singing them for once. The general raw aesthetic around the album also suits the more tender songs perfectly, and that's including Wire's voice - because my mutant superpower is actually liking it. You honestly can't really call Wire's voice good and this album takes placebefore he got more confident with it, but there's a rough power to it that perfectly suits the soundworld he's chosen for the album. With the gentler songs it adds a layer of vulnerability; with the more explosive songs, his voice is perfect for their eyeliner and spraypaint aesthetic. It may not be a pretty voice and is absolutely an acquired taste, but part of me thinks these songs might be lesser if someone more polished sang them.
Secret success then? Much like Bradfield's 2006 solo album The Great Western is ultimately best enjoyed by people who are fans of the Manics already, so is I Killed the Zeitgeist and certainly even more so. In case of Bradfield this was because the inherent qualities of his solo album were ones already familiar from the Manics and thus unlikely to convert anyone new. Meanwhile Wire's solo album somewhat requires that you're so invested in the band you'd listen to anything related to them, because Wire's divisive (to put it kindly) voice and the album's rough exterior certainly aren't the kinds of things you'd be able to present around to any unsuspecting person. But where it's awkward on the surface it can be a genuinely lovely thing when you dig underneath, with a lot of genuinely good songs strictly in terms of their melodies and arrangements, and others that win over with charm where they might lack a little on other intricacies. Where the strengths of The Great Western are almost obvious, it's the unpredictability and whimsy of I Killed the Zeitgeist that makes it almost special. It's a little short of great but not too far - and while I still wouldn't recommend it to anyone who isn't a big fan of the band, this might just be one of the most underrated and misunderstood albums of the wider Manics universe.
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